


Transcend

by drawingblinds (breathtaken)



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-07
Updated: 2006-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/drawingblinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's always felt like he can read Roger a little bit more than is normal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transcend

There is something about music, Mark notes, that transcends every other level of communication. Words are so incredibly fallible, even touches hold endless streams of connotations, and some days he isn't sure that a few random shots of homeless people in doorways and a leaf falling from a branch in Central Park mean anything at all. But music can rouse and soothe and shoot straight to the heart like nothing he'll ever be able to do, and sometimes he feels half in love with Roger for the beauty he can birth across his six strings and an East Village skyline, and sometimes he wants to hit him for all those after parties and booze and hits and fucking wasted time. And then he feels so guilty because this is his best friend, who found love in the wrong place and lost it in his own fucking bathroom, blood still set crimson into the cracks of the bathtub, who has nothing left of his young wild life but a crappy old Fender that just won't tune and his poisonous blood, a countdown clock with no numbers on that feels like you can't imagine. So Mark would swallow the lump in his throat and make Roger a cup of coffee he hadn't asked for, and Roger would look up from A and D major, puzzled and gratified, wondering how Mark could read his mind.

Mark knows he should just be glad that his roommate is playing at all, even if it isn't a song or even a tune. He could go every note up the D string and back again all night if he wanted to, weird chromatic scales and clashing notes as well as those that fit. It feels to Mark as though he's re-learning his instrument: so much forgotten through that year of hell, he needs to know every note, every chord intimately before he can fit them together. Mark supposes it's kind of like film, understanding the focus and composition of a shot just as much as the story it portrays, only these notes, these weird remarkable sounds were not taught to Roger in some stuffy lecture room filled with kids in berets and drainpipe jeans who wanted their own piece of art. They are the sun on his fourteen year old face, the gentle curve of the first girl's thigh, the swiftness of a razor blade. A hundred parts of Roger, stories that Mark never has and never will hear in words, but that nestle between chords and spread across a new arpeggio to tell the story of his best friend's life.

Maybe he's crazy, or making it up inside his mind, but he's always felt like he can read Roger a little bit more than is normal. Or read Roger's music, at least. When they're speaking then Mark can mistake Roger's mood and say the wrong thing a thousand times, but one sour note in a pattern of five would immediately appear sure and steady in Mark's mind as the time Roger's father hit him when he was thirteen for smoking his cigarettes. Or once it was the time Roger's father hit him when he was fifteen for kissing a boy, which made Mark think he really had gone insane because no way would that actually have happened. And sometimes it really does scare him, the images in his mind are far too clear and direct to be his own vague imaginings. An opening chain of notes might be Roger getting into a car he'd never seen but knew to belong to his friend's stepdad - how, he had no idea. Once a pounding chorus had shown him Roger's second time having sex, behind some bushes in a park with a girl from history class, not a thought he wanted or needed at CBGB's on a Thursday night. And the tightness in his pants and the tall, lithe man with electric blue hair and hipbones you could cut yourself on who relieved that tightness for him in the bathroom after...well, he doesn't think there's any way he'd be able to explain that one in a hurry. That is one of the things in the mental box marked Never, Ever Tell Roger. Though by now it's become more of a mental crate.

He's never told Roger anything about the images. He never could. Or anyone else, they'd just think he was nuts, and in their position he really wouldn't blame them. It's not like he can prove it or even explain it. Even if you consider that insane slice of possibility that what he's seeing is really Roger's thoughts...well. You can't tell your best friend you can see into their mind, even after almost six years of everything together. Especially with some of the things he's seen.

But even with all that's happened, this crazy kind of telepathy that always filled him full of the deepest meanings of his best friend's every chord, even the terrifying feeling of warmth and invincibility from few times Roger played while high, this was all so much better than the silence. Because for a year after Mark found him with April's cold, lifeless body in his arms, screaming himself dry on the bloodied bathroom floor, his roommate did not play a single note. And that year just past was terrible, of course, as Roger fought and screamed and vomited and despaired his way to nothingness, too raw to think and then too numb to create, as if his brain had walled off his emotions in an attempt to stop him shutting down. And Mark hates himself for his selfishness, but can't help to think that things were so much worse for him too because he'd lost his extra, special pieces of Roger, the channel in his brain that for five incredible years had shown him every tale his friend was really telling, was silent and dead. Without that crutch he knew him no better then than the silent, unresponsive shell of a man who gazed into each and every New York dawn to find it empty. That had stung, deeply and in ways he was only just beginning to understand.

Mark looks over, and he's there now, curled up on the windowsill, one hand resting across the curve of his guitar as he watches the sunset. Mark is sitting on the couch, pretending to fiddle with his camera, though in truth he hasn't touched it for more than ten minutes. He winds the handle quickly, hoping Roger hasn't noticed, to make it appear as though he's still engrossed in his work. He suddenly has the awful, mortifying thought this connection between them might work both ways, though he has no idea how it could. He hopes to God it doesn't. Much as he loves Roger there is that whole mental crate full of things he would never share if his life depended on it. Like the time he wet himself at Disneyworld when he was six because he was scared of Captain Hook. Or the time Maureen thought it would be a really good idea for her to 'be the man'... and the six times after that. Or the blue-haired man in the bathroom at one of Roger's biggest gigs and the fact that maybe somewhere in the middle he'd forgotten that the mouth enveloping him and driving him slowly to ecstasy didn't belong to someone entirely different. No, he couldn't know. He wouldn't be speaking to Mark if he did. Or if he knew some of the things his roommate had seen - memories and hopes, desires and fears, and once, just once before bigger venues and April and everything falling apart, his own face, staring towards himself (towards Roger) with an awe and wonder of such intensity he could almost feel it radiating from his own skin. And he knew, with that clear unwavering certainty with which he knew that his friend had once eaten salt to get out of a math test, he knew that Roger looked at him in that moment and thought him beautiful. And Mark's stomach lurches violently as he watches his friend take his fingers to his strings in the flush half-light, and an understanding that has been building up behind his eyes for months is suddenly full and whole: the images, the bathroom, his own face. The whole damn fascination. And when the first chord forms, he realises that he thinks Roger is beautiful too.

His first thought is that no, his destiny cannot possibly be this cruel, and as he sees April in her red dress, dancing on the fire escape in high summer and opening worlds with her smile, the effects of his and Roger's pain combined are such that he weeps, slowly and imperceptibly, for the first time in as long as he can remember. So this is the answer. To be infatuated with, maybe even be in love with your best friend and know that any chance you may have once had came crashing down with this girl, a girl you couldn't even hate as she was almost a sister to you for seven months, this is his lot. But the notes trickle forth in a sequence that sometimes stalls and jars and would not even be a tune to any casual listener, and yet to Mark it is an awakening.

The things Mark sees are halting, confused, blending into each other like liquid, but he can still make out faces, scenes that make his heart race in his chest. He sees his face, hand on Roger's neck as he threw up after a bad hit, almost two years ago now. He feels Roger's aches and his shame and his careful eyes on Mark as he murmured an apology, asking himself how he deserved this man, what he'd do without him. He sees April too, alive and dead, her beautiful smile and the waves in her deep red hair, feels the smoothness of her pale skin and Roger's overwhelming, crashing lust and care and desire and everything for this girl, this sassy, vibrant, gorgeous girl who left him and tore his life apart. He sees the first revelation, letters in lipstick on the mirror that Roger smashed with his fist when Collins took the body away. The clinic, the piece of paper that weighed down on the loft like lead, the hard heavy finality of a death sentence. Months of withdrawal, scenes he remembers and some he doesn't, of pain and sickness and shaking need and violent despair, and his face, or Collins', watching with mingled pain and pity and saying that no, he couldn't leave the loft until he was clean. And while he watches the Roger of the past shout and rail and plead and sob, he knows that the Roger sitting to his left understands, and has forgiven.

But then there is an image that makes him start and half gasp with shock. April and himself, sitting on the table one morning with bowls of cereal, just an ordinary day. He was making stupid slurping noises, he can't remember why, and she was giggling and trying not to spray milk everywhere. But he is seeing through Roger's eyes, and he looked...cute. Then the full force of this realisation hit Roger, and it was all he could do not to scream as he stumbled backwards, horrified. Mark remembers himself and April asking what was wrong, concerned, and Roger replying that he felt sick as he stumbled into the bathroom and closed the door. But now he can see his best friend sitting on the toilet seat, head in hands and mind reeling from the force of discovery. And Mark can feel everything. First denial. _No, no, I can't. It's Mark, my roommate, my best friend. I never had a best friend before._ Then loathing. _This is wrong. Isn't it, Dad?!_ Because even though he's always accepted everyone else, other people didn't have a father who'd beaten him and shouted that _no son of mine is a fucking queer_. For April had been sitting alongside Mark the whole time, smiling her brilliant smile, and he really did love her - and even though the things she took and the things she did scared him sometimes, any of that must be, had to be better than this awful _bitch_ of a trick his mind was playing on him. It couldn't be true. Mark would hate him, April would hate him, his father would probably kill him if he knew.

More images follow this one. Mark and April, lust and guilt, hatred and despair. Mark can barely remember how to breathe as Roger's secret emotions enfold in front of him, all these feelings he's never once imagined. Does this mean something then? Now Roger's thoughts, after being contained inside of him for so long, are appearing in his songs...if he can finally come to terms with everything enough to create from it, even if it is hidden in a way nobody else can decipher, has he begun to accept?

These thoughts die in Mark's mind as he comes upon another image. This is new. This has never happened, the song tells him, it's Roger's imagination. It's night. His roommate is seated on the couch, and Mark can feel his lips moving, but has no idea what he is saying. Suddenly there is a hand on the back of Roger's neck, medium sized and a little rough. His hand. It's kneading the muscles there, pinching slightly, and he would _know_ if he had ever done that. Roger is leaning into his touch, eyes closing, and he hears a small satisfied sigh escape his lips. Suddenly the hand vanishes, and Mark sees himself come into view, and he knows that to Roger he looks more stunning than anyone the man has ever seen. The Mark in the fantasy smirks wickedly, before straddling Roger and capturing his lips in a hungry, fierce kiss. Mark thinks he probably shouldn't be surprised, but that doesn't stop him feeling as though all the wind's been knocked out of him. He is aware of hips grinding together, hard and coarse, and shudders to himself. Roger's lust is taking over his mind, and the knock-on effect makes him feel slightly dizzy. He watches lips collide and hands explore, until the fantasy Mark's hand reaches for Roger's belt buckle -

Roger abruptly stops playing; the image ceases. Mark's brain is doing overtime. He smoothes any residue of the tears from his cheeks. "What are you gonna call it?" His voice is rough, as if he's only just learned to speak.

Roger looks over, baffled. "What? It's not a song." Suddenly he takes in Mark's appearance, and thinks, _no. There's no way he can know_. He's never dared think about Mark while playing before - well, once, but definitely never with his friend in the room - and he had a feeling the notes were getting good but the desires in his head weren't ones he could bring himself to entertain with their recipient sitting right in front of him. Now he is half-hard and terrified and Mark looks like he's been hit by an emotional truck, flushing red as the evening skyline. He can't know - yet somehow it seems he does.

The look of sheer horror panning across his roommate's face tells Mark, he _knows_. He feels detached, as though he is observing himself through the lens of his camera. He rises from the couch, ignoring Roger's visible flinch as he sees him move, and crosses towards him. He can barely move through the tension thick inside the loft. Once, briefly, he kisses Roger, right on the lips. Roger doesn't move. Both their eyes are open. "Whenever you're ready," he tells his friend, then walks into his room and sits on the bed, making sure to leave the door wide open.

Mark waits.


End file.
